Giving Him Hell_A Saturn's Daughter Novel Page 8

Schwartz hung up on his call and let his prisoner stand again so Andre could examine him. “He shot at Tina. She thinks he’s one of the security guards from the Vanderventer estate.”

  The guards who had killed Granny, then pointed an accusing finger at Andre, and disappeared—because I’d turned them into frogs for trying to kill us. Andre was not predisposed to be kind to them.

  Andre studied Stupid’s snarling visage and shrugged. “Morons all look alike to me. Can’t tell. You can ask Ned to identify him in the morning. But the coroner ruled Gloria’s death accidental, so you can’t hold him on that. You shot at Tina?”

  Without any more warning than that, Andre drove a swift uppercut into Stupid’s jaw. Schwartz’s prisoner slumped like a dead weight.

  “You could have broken your knuckles,” I protested in awe, watching the guy go down and not come back up. I sooo wanted to be able to do that.

  “Not if you know where to hit them. Besides, it keeps you from standing here badgering him anymore. C’mon, let’s get you home.” He shouldered Milo’s tote, clamped my uninjured arm, and began dragging me uphill.

  Schwartz saluted his actions in appreciation.

  I wasn’t so appreciative, but my arm stung, and I was still recovering from the surprise of that blow. Andre had bruised his knuckles for me. I had to admit, that was some kind of impressive.

  “We’d better let my mother look at that scratch, Clancy. It apparently took out your tongue.”

  I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. “Will this place ever make sense? Or is it a law of the Universe that the cards get shuffled every time I figure out the game?” I was remembering my botched curses but Andre didn’t know that.

  “Survival of the species requires adaptation to change,” he said with a shrug. “We’re survivors. Anyone else would be dead meat.”

  That was painfully true, given my recent experiences. “Let’s not distract from the moment. Why would one of Gloria’s thugs be gunning for me?”

  “Do you know for certain that he’s one of her men?” he asked with interest.

  “Who else would it be? Two in one day is no coincidence. What I don’t understand is why. Granny’s gone and Acme is under control again. I’m not bothering anyone.”

  “Yet,” he added in grim amusement. “Maybe they’re gunning for you before you start something.”

  I grew up watching old westerns, but I wasn’t buying the black hats shooting the sheriff before they robbed the bank. Besides, I wasn’t the sheriff.

  The blood leaking down my arm probably bled my brains, too. “I think we’re standing on hell, Legrande,” I said wearily. “And I think the ground between us is melting.”

  “There’s always that possibility,” he agreed, humoring me as he dragged me up the stairs to his home. “Or else, you just bring out the devil in people.”

  When I think of the world being full of possibilities, those were two I’d rather not consider. Chemically polluted ground—yes. Biblical fire—not so much.

  I followed Andre inside. Milo stuck his head out, shook snowflakes out of his fur, and settled into his tote to lick himself dry.

  Andre had taken the ground floor apartment during his mother’s illness, leaving her undisturbed in the attic they’d converted into a hospital. Julius, his father, lived on the floor in between.

  Acme’s mystery element had cured Andre’s mother of cancer ten years ago, only to send her into a coma for the past decade. Another gaseous experiment a few weeks ago had created monsters, but had also mysteriously returned Katerina Montoya from the near-dead. Once a proud, beautiful woman, she hadn’t appeared in public since her recovery.

  Since Katerina still couldn’t get around on her own, they’d not changed the household arrangement a lot. Julius stayed by her side, rendering him the most silent partner a lawyer could hope to have. Because Julius Montoya is a well-respected and beloved attorney, and Andre is a lying manipulative cad most of the time, Andre protects his parents by generously not polluting his father’s good name.

  Andre led me upstairs to join them.

  Since her recovery a few weeks ago, Katerina and I had both been too busy to do much more than wave across the street at each other. I’d first met her as a raven-haired Sleeping Beauty who hadn’t aged in ten years. But we’d never really talked since she’d woken.

  She was sitting in her wheelchair in the kitchen, chopping peppers, when we came up the stairs. She was still beautiful, although dark circles rimmed her brilliantly green eyes. She smiled genuinely at our arrival.

  “Ah, the mysterious Tina, at last we meet properly! I enjoy the way my son grits his teeth when he says your name.”

  How could anyone not like a woman like that? I grinned and shrugged off Andre’s hold on my arm. “Now that he has you back to keep him honest, I’m trying to avoid being a thorn in his side, but he’s just so easy.”

  Andre began prying my coat off my back. “Easy is not a word I’d apply to you,” he said snarkily. “Tina’s just got herself shot by baiting an idiot.”

  Concern creased Katerina’s face, and she rang a buzzer that brought Julius hurrying in.

  “We’ll need a first aid kit, if not a paramedic,” she said in the same dry tone as Andre often used.

  Julius Montoya had a photographic memory, a formidable legal mind, and the patience of a saint. He merely lifted his expressive brow at sight of my bloody sleeve and hurried off to find bandages.

  “Andre, bring her one of my shirts so we can remove this one, and then have the decency to disappear instead of hovering,” Katerina commanded.

  To my surprise, supercilious Andre obeyed without questioning.

  “Smart man,” I murmured in amusement, taking the kitchen chair indicated. “He knows when he’s outgunned.” I forced myself to look at the stinging arm. The bullet had burned through the sleeve of my black Lauren tailored shirt, one of my favorite Goodwill finds.

  “If I knew how to sew, I’d turn it into a sleeveless,” I said with more carelessness than I felt. I grabbed the fabric with my good hand and ripped off the sleeve. The seams had been giving out anyway.

  “Antiseptic,” Katerina insisted, examining the wound I’d revealed. “Something to keep dirt from it for a while. But I agree, you won’t die. Do you know who did this?”

  “Schwartz has him. We’ll find out. It’s the why that worries me. I don’t think I’ve even riled Paddy lately.” Well, I’d turned a CEO into stone, but who knew that?

  “We haven’t seen Padraig around recently. Perhaps it’s time we ask him over and discover what is happening at Acme.” Katerina took the washcloth and soap I soaked for her and began dabbing at the scratch.

  Julius returned with the first aid kit in time to hear us. “I think Paddy is caving under pressure. He’s a scientist, not an administrator. The MacNeills are running the show. But they have no reason to shoot Tina.”

  Andre entered with a sexy red silk blouse that was so not me. He could keep on wishing. I glared, and he got the picture pretty fast, tossing the garment over the back of a chair. “You’ll have to pull your senator’s strings, Clancy. Make Vanderventer find out what’s going down.”

  There were so many ways that wasn’t happening, and most of them I couldn’t explain. So I shrugged. “Until I know this wasn’t some kind of personal grudge, I’m voting that we go for a town meeting with Acme. Who wants to be neighborhood representative and speak for us?”

  To my utter shock, Katerina spoke up. “I do.”

  Eleven

  With my arm taped up, I left Andre and Julius shouting at each other—because they’d never shout at Katerina. I was liking the idea of Katerina acting as unofficial mayor of Whoville.

  The night was young yet. Refusing to let anyone think I’d been intimidated by a thug with a gun, I locked Milo in the apartment, and headed right back to Chesty’s. With the Saturn legacy hanging over my head, I wasn’t thinking about getting lucky, but I could get drunk. What I really wanted was answers.

>   As I walked down the hill, the almost spectral appearance of the dark, foggy street lined with utility trucks weirded me out. I had good reason to be uneasy. Unless there was an emergency, utility workers had no business lingering after business hours. They should take their big yellow trucks and orange cones and go home to the kiddies.

  I didn’t see the workers. Had they gone down the steaming red manholes?

  Acknowledging the danger of my stubbornness in returning to the scene of the crime, I slipped down a cross street in the direction of the harbor. Over the years of keeping my head down, I’d learned all the hidden shortcuts and twists the Zone created. The harbor alley took me behind the buildings on Edgewater.

  The clang, drag of a Dumpster echoed against brick walls. I didn’t glance back to see if it followed or guarded me. Garbage cans shouldn’t move, no matter what the case. I wanted to accept that the ground here was so polluted that it gave life to inanimate objects. I just had the uneasy fear that was too simple a solution.

  Fires flickered in the homeless camp on the far side of the chain link, out by the water. For a moment, I thought I saw a blue blur. I took a step toward the fence, and the blur dissolved. Maybe Andre was right. We had cataracts. Blue ones. That’s what happened when our local neighborhood chemical company gassed us.

  I wanted to believe that with Gloria gone, the bad days were over and rationality had returned, but hot streets and exploding wreaths proved otherwise.

  These back streets weren’t as hot as the main one, so I had to be careful not to slip on ice or puddles. I safely entered Chesty’s through the rear door. I used to work here, and I waved at the cooks as I skirted the kitchen. In relief at the normality, I offered weather reports to the dancers and waitresses in the passage to the front.

  Chesty’s is the only place to find any food besides fries and burgers after five, so everyone in the Zone stops by here in the evening. I noted a few nylon-coated utility workers still getting a buzz on at the bar and a few tourists surreptitiously checking out the naked murals decorating the walls. I took my favorite booth behind the pole dancers.

  Schwartz and Andre slid in shortly after. That they’d known I’d be back and had followed me down couldn’t be good.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said brightly, flashing a fake smile. “Don’t give me any bad news until I have my spaghetti.”

  “If you would read the crap I bring you instead of lecturing me, you’d already know the bad news,” Andre said unkindly. Even at day’s end, he looked sexy and unrumpled. Better, he had that five o’clock shadow thing happening.

  But I was staring at the possibility of being celibate for another year if I didn’t want to bring any more paranoid Saturn’s Daughters into the world. Even if Andre wasn’t still my client, which he was, I couldn’t do sexy—maybe not for another year.

  “They can’t condemn your buildings if you’re making repairs.” I waved at Diane, and the waitress nodded, knowing my order without being told. I’m not a dead cow aficionado, and Chesty’s menu was limited. I came here because I got a thrill at being recognized after all the years of invisibility. So, call me shallow.

  “The EPA has inspectors testing the soil any place that isn’t paved,” Schwartz said, unrelentingly.

  “Not until I have my spaghetti,” I warned, accepting the beer Diane brought over.

  Andre ignored my protest. Naturally. “Clancy, we need you to breathe fire down the EPA’s back. My mother calling a nice meeting won’t do it.” He waited expectantly for the spark of justice to light my fire.

  Not damning anyone, I promised myself. Sighing, I set down my beer. “Me fighting the EPA isn’t David versus Goliath, it’s Toy Story versus the Universe. Not happening except in the comic books.”

  “It’s Vanderventer trying to shut us down,” Andre reported.

  In the bad old days, Vanderventers wouldn’t have been involved for altruistic reasons. Unfortunately, Max’s new regime of power-to-the-people was just as much a nuisance. I wasn’t certain that being socially conscious was any better if it had the same result—shutting down my home.

  “I told the senator to back off.” I swigged more beer, self-medicating the pain in my arm. “He’s pulling out the Do-Gooders. And there’s nothing wrong with changing the world. It damned well needs it.”

  “You haven’t lived here long enough to get a vote,” Andre scoffed.

  “You don’t get to play lord over me, Legrande,” I warned. “Max has nothing to do with us. It’s the city who governs the Zone. No one’s getting a vote unless you want to start a recall election and overthrow city government. So stifle it.”

  “If the EPA condemns the Zone, they have to offer recompense for the property, don’t they?” Schwartz asked pragmatically.

  That did not enhance our gloom. It wasn’t about the money. It was about the community. Even Invisible Tim got that—maybe more than the rest of us. Andre with his PTSD, and me with my justice problem, might not do well in the outside world, but we could pass as normal. Tim was a gay teen with cowardice issues who blinked out when confronted. He’d never survive elsewhere. If he stayed here, with people who accepted him, he could grow up in one piece and have time to develop confidence.

  I ordered another beer. My birthday wasn’t over, and they were harshing my parade.

  ***

  “We need exorcists,” I said drunkenly as Andre and Schwartz steered me up the street around midnight. No more utility thugs appeared to shoot at me.

  “Exorcists ought to do it,” Andre agreed, obviously appeasing me. “A few voodoo priestesses while we’re at it.”

  I wasn’t that drunk. “Not to exorcise the Zone, dumquat.” I thought about that. “Okay, maybe for the Zone, too. But for Hell’s Mansion. Know any priests?”

  “Hell’s Mansion?” Schwartz had obviously come along to protect my virtue from Andre’s marauding hands. He didn’t know how to follow my drunken rambling.

  Andre did. “Dane has demons?” he asked in amusement. “I’d pay to watch that.”

  “I’ll tell him you’ll pay the cover charge for the priests,” I said. Max would probably kill me for mentioning any of this to Andre, but now that it looked like Max and I would never get it on again, I was still worried about my ex. “I’m thinking Benedictine nuns. No sane devil could hang around when they sing like heaven’s angels.”

  “We could hold the meeting about Acme and eminent domain at Dane’s place,” Andre suggested, possibly with tongue in cheek. “The Zone’s newly self-appointed representative used to love visiting the mansion. With priests and nuns around, no one might get killed.”

  His mother wanted to be the town rep, I remembered hazily. I could hope that Katerina might be more stable than Andre. “If Gloria doesn’t burn the house down around us,” I agreed, revealing what shouldn’t be revealed.

  “Gloria?” Schwartz asked in puzzlement.

  “Clancy’s drunk, Schwartz. She has nightmares. You gonna take her upstairs or shall I?” Covering for my lapse, Andre propped me up on the bottom step of my boarding house.

  “Taking myself up. Tell Katerina if she knows priests, we’ll exorcize the mansion. We’ll make Max . . .” Even I wasn’t that drunk. I corrected myself. “We’ll make Dane see what we’re up against.”

  If Andre narrowed his eyes suspiciously, I didn’t notice. I just stumbled to the door, let Schwartz open it, and proudly hauled my own carcass upstairs.

  Since he lived in the apartment across from me, Schwartz followed to keep me from toppling backward.

  Pinned to my door was a pink ribbon and a pencil message in a familiar scrawl:

  Hell has many dimensions, aziz. So does time. Don’t risk them.

  Themis, my mysterious Iranian grandmother—whom I’ve never met. She’s the only one who speaks Persian to me. I unpinned the ribbon and message and crushed them against my chest. My birthday present.

  Hell exists and my grandmother is reading my blog messages to Fat Chick. Swell.

&nbs
p; Schwartz was studying me with bewilderment, as well he might. In theory, no one can enter the boarding house without a key and our landlady can’t climb the stairs. Messages appearing from nowhere are a trifle unsettling, as I should know.

  I unlocked my locks, then stood on my toes and kissed the good lieutenant’s rough cheek. He smelled of beer and Old Spice. I hiccupped and kissed him again. “Night, Schwartz.” I hastily opened my door and shut it between us.

  With any luck, the kiss ought to distract him from weird messages. I was in no shape to explain invisible grandmothers who spoke foreign languages. I’d looked it up. Aziz is Persian for dear. My very own Mesopotamian grandmamma—except she used the English alphabet.

  Twelve

  By the next day, the police had taken down the crime scene tape, and Ned’s clean-up crew had scrubbed my office lobby to a pristine brilliance it hadn’t seen in fifty years.

  Nursing a dull headache, I began shoving the boxes of gnomes inside, mostly using my feet instead of my injured arm. It was Saturday. I didn’t have office hours on weekends. Even the Do-Gooders had taken the day off.

  Unless I learned otherwise, I might have an entire lonely year of celibacy ahead. I could fill my working hours fighting eminent domain. But for relaxation, I’d better find a hobby—one safer than ticking off thugs and exploring under the Zone. I wasn’t sure exorcising Gloria was healthier, but she and Dane were the only demons I knew who might set wreaths on fire and blow up gas lines.

  I’d rather tackle Gloria than go wandering under the Zone again. For all I knew, the utility workers had gone bonkers from walking through the Zone’s underground pollution.

  I just didn’t know how to hunt a dead person in the hellish dimensions that my granny said I shouldn’t risk.

  I shoved a box of gnomes to an empty office and studied the situation. I wasn’t accustomed to idleness. I needed activity before I went looking for trouble.

  Andre had a huge building here. The wiring was ancient and wouldn’t support modern electronic offices. He’d had cable run in from a safe neighborhood behind us for my computer. So far, the Zone hadn’t grown tentacles this far up the hill.